I'd pull it out. Get a small, sharp pry bar/cat's paw/nail puller thingy. I don't know exactly what they're called, but they're about 8" long and sharp enough to draw blood. Great for digging out nails. Can be found next to the regular pry bars in the tool aisle.

Some combination of that and extreme violence will get that top row of siding off.

Some guys do it that way and it's ok for small overhangs (less than a foot), but the correct way is with lookout rafters. Of course then you need to pull up some decking and notch down into the wall, but you don't need to run them every 16 or 24". One at the top, one at the bottom, and maybe one in the middle is fine. Much better support that way.

btw, gotta say I'm impressed at your progress. You seem to be kicking some ass on this.

Thanks.

Man o man, my hands are killing me. I've been pulling nails and hammering that puller for three days. They aren't used to that.

Getting a more relaxed start today. Not using any labor so I thought I'd get a good meal and some coffee in me before I get started.

Thanks a bunch zikzak. I'm learning a lot.

My goal today was to get everything ready to frame and deck tomorrow.

That top row of siding that needed to come off was a m'er****er. Holy crap that was hard. Some of the nails were right behind the notched rafters. It took a combination of pulling what nails I could get to and breaking the wood. I hit myself in the face twice when pieces came loose unexpectedly.

Then I went after the sides of the house to get the siding away from the end rafter. There is not only vertical siding, but underneath they nailed a 1x4 along the length of the rafter. I didn't want to tear all the vertical siding off because, well, it might rain before I get to this part. So, I took the skil saw to the siding, right below the rafter.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get to all of this. The dumpster is on one side of the house and I'm not sure how I'm going to get scaffolding on the other side. Normally I'd try to do some stuff on a ladder, but this is too much. No way I can pull that wood off and hold on to a ladder at the same time. Plus, what I have left is pretty high. 15' at least.

But, I got a pretty decent amount of work done.

Pics incoming.

Here's the side of the house. I got some of the siding at the top removed, but the dumpster needs to go so I can get the scaffolding there.



This gable is nothing but decoration. There is decking underneath it. The gable vent was sort of build on the fly. It fell apart pretty easily. And, there was no screen on it at all.



This is going to be a challenge. The scaffolding won't fit in here normally. I think I can put one end of the scaffolding by the house and the other on the other side of the fence and put the crossbars through the fence. This will be a major pain in the ass. If it works.



Filled this dumpster.



And still have a buttload of trash.

roughly what percentage of your house is going to be left once you've finished pulling stuff off it?

Also, once you're done, I've got a dodgy garage you can come and take a look at.

Just the frame.

It's a 2-parter. The roof, soffit, and fascia first. Then I will wait for the foundation guys to finish before I tackle the siding.

Ha. I might not live through this.

My right hand/wrist is shot from hammering and pulling wood. It kept me awake last night. I can barely hold a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, I gotta keep trucking. Chance of rain this afternoon. Which means it will pour obviously.

My goal today was to get the felt on. I did not achieve that goal.

However, it was a great day. It didn't rain. I got to use my nail gun and saw and stuff. And, since I wasn't doing demolition work I wore shorts. It made a huge difference. Much more comfortable.

I go sort of slow for a few reasons. 1) The first goal is to stay out of the sun so I sort of work wherever there is shade. That leads to a lot of moving stuff around. 2) I spend a lot of time looking for the tool I set down somewhere. 3) I measure and measure and think about it and measure some more before I cut anything. So far I haven't screwed anything up. 4) I don't know everything about carpentry so I sort of have to stop and figure stuff out.

I got all but 2 pieces of decking finished. I sistered up 7 rafters which took a while. I finished the soffit/fascia framing on the front of the house. I'm about half way finished with the soffit/fascia framing on the back of the house.

I attempted to hang one hardi fascia board just so I could see what it looked like. They are really long and pretty heavy and it slipped and fell and broke. So, I just put up one of the broken pieces. I'm pretty pleased with the result. I didn't want to really do much more work with the hardi because I didn't want to have to keep changing out saw blades. I'll just do it after everything is framed.

My compressor just stopped on me about noon. I normally just have it plugged in to a socket in the garage but I didn't have enough hose to reach the front so I moved it out a ways and plugged it into an extension cord. Then, it just stopped. I've had it a long time so I figured it just died. But, I thought I'd look at the manual anyways. The first suggestion if the compressor stops running is to make sure you aren't using an extension cord. Sure enough, I moved it to a socket and plugged it in and it ran fine. I had no idea.

No pics today. It got dark on me. But, I have to take pictures of all the decking before I felt it in for Weshole.

Lots of great pics tomorrow!

Finished up the deck repair. I just had to stop because I kept finding things I didn't like. I could just keep doing it forever.

Put down this valley stuff. LOL. I was trying to peel the membrane off and it folded over on itself. Man, that stuff is sticky. I ended up tearing a piece trying to get it unstuck. Fortunately I had enough to put two pieces in one valley.



Random deck repairs.

This is an inspiring amount of work and persistence, keep it up!

Thanks!

Finished framing for the front an back fascia. Put up the front and back fascia. Dried in the roof. Do they still use this term? It means putting the felt on.

I'm a little disappointed with the fascia. But, when you have a house that's all wobbly everywhere, your fascia comes out a little wobbly too.

One of the felt rolls got away from me and started rolling down the roof. So, instead of thinking I chased it. I stepped on some of the unrolled felt and busted my ass. My feet just went out from under me. I stopped myself about 3 feet from the edge of the roof.

Some really hot girl driving a u-haul stopped and asked to use my phone. Very friendly. I think I might have had a shot at her maybe if I hadn't been covered with sweat and dirt and stunk and was old.

I just HAD to finish the felt today. But, I ran out of tin caps. Fortunately, I had a box in my garage. Who keeps boxes of tin caps? I do I guess. Speaking of tin caps, they don't make 'em like they used to. They are almost as thin as aluminum foil. Kept shooting nails through them. Sliced my finger open on one. Then, it really really looked like I was going to run out of felt. I got there with almost nothing to spare. Maybe 50 sq. ft. of odd scraps leftover. But, I got there.

I'm one exhausted mf'er. The last 2 days were 12 hour days. I'm going back to work tomorrow and I'm really happy to get some rest.

Pics!

Congrats on getting it dried in (yes, we still call it that) and not falling completely off the roof. Pity about the chick tho.

I think this all caught up to me. I feel like I have the flu. My entire right arm hurts. I took some hydrocodone last night for the pain and I still couldn't sleep. My right hand keeps going numb.

Hopefully all I need is a couple days rest. It's making me re-think my strategy some. I might hire someone to put the shingles on. Being up on the roof all day in over 100 degree heat is a challenge. There's not much shade there.

I'm disappointed that it took me this long to find your blog.

Today I went in to pick up my life safety for expired permit permit for the garage. There is a guy at the window that basically just takes your name to put you on the waitlist. He asked me what kind of permit I was picking up. I told him a life safety permit. He said "what?". I said "life safety for expired permit permit". He said "I never heard of that. Who told you to come here". I told him and he shook his head, but put my name down anyways. It was pretty easy after that, though. Waited about 30 minutes, paid for, and picked up the permit. The guy that processed it actually gave me a pin number for when I called to schedule the inspection. Inspection scheduled for Monday, with Weshole.

I've been getting all my supplies at Lowe's but they won't load shingles on the roof. I swore I'm never hauling shingles up a ladder again so I went to a local roofing supply place to place an order. They were about the same price, and about the same price to have them loaded as Lowe's charges for delivery. So, I'm happy.

One thing I'm not happy about is the drip edge. I'm probably being anal about this, but the standard drip edge doesn't have enough metal on the part you nail down to cover the fascia and reach to a nailable part of the roof. This is shiplap and has some old wood so I need a wider top. But, they apparently don't make 1" drip edge with a wider top. So I bought 2" drip edge only I don't like that it's 2". I don't think it looks as good but oh well. I'm bad about staring at little things nobody will ever notice.

While I was there I asked the guy if he knew any good shinglers. My hands are still a mess and I figure if I can get a good price I'll hire someone. He pulled out a bunch of contractor cards. I told him I don't want a company, just a guy with a gun. He gave me the name of, well, a guy with a gun. He said a lot of the contractors use him. After talking to him, he really is a guy with a bunch of guys with a gun. I'm guessing there would be more guns than green cards with this group. He quoted me $21 a square. After calculating how much I make and the amount of time I'd have to take off to do this (remember - I'm old and slow), I figured it was a bargain. So, I think I just hired this out.

Shingles come Monday morning. Shinglers come Tuesday. I've still got quite a bit of fascia and framing for fascia but I think I can get it done.

SUP BSBALL! Hurry up and come to town again so we can have a beer!

Today started like this and didn't get any better.



That was from a hammer slip.

My goal today was to remove all the wood along the end rafters so I could frame for my fascia on the sides. That little slip happened about 5 minutes into the day.

I finished up that side and decided that, since the scaffold was there I'd go ahead and try to frame that side.

I shot 1 nail and my nail gun jammed. It has never jammed before. I've been using 2 different size nails, 1 for framing and 1 for nailing decking. Apparently three was 1 smaller nail left in the gun when I loaded the bigger nails. I usually tap the gun to make sure this doesn't happen but, well, it happened.

I spent about 2 hours trying to get that nail out. I was hitting this with a sledgehammer with no luck.



Then I tried to take it apart like the instructions said. Not the gun, but the part that holds the nails. Stuff like this is supposed to not be hard but it was. Two of the hex nuts wouldn't budge. I ended up using a monkey wrench to get them off. Then I couldn't find a wrench for the two other nuts. Turns out the were metric. Sheesh. Finally dug through my box of useless metric tools and tried to get them off. No luck. They just turned. Only you can't even see the other side of them to maybe get something on a nut. They just turned and turned.

I was pretty much defeated at this point. So I went to Lowe's to get a new gun. I didn't see the kind I had so I asked the guy what a good gun was. He asked "well, what angle do you need". Apparently there are 22 degree guns, 28 degree guns, etc. etc. Who knew? Since I have a bunch of nails I wanted a gun that could use them. So, back home I go. On the drive back I thought maybe the Home Depot tool rental folks might know how to get this unjammed. So, I get the gun and head on over. Big long lines at the tool rental place so I said "**** it I'll just get a new gun". I went over to the tool area and couldn't find the nail guns so I asked someone that worked there. I then decided to ask him if he might know how to unjam it. Miracle of miracles he said "yes, I used to work on these". He told me to take the whole thing apart and get it from the top. He told me a bunch of details that I won't go into. So, I got some stuff he recommended and headed back home.

I figured I'd lost enough of the day already and I figured I could tackle the gun in the morning. So, I decided to finish tearing off the necessary wood from the other side of the house.

This was not so easy. Here is the only way to get the scaffolding next to the house.



So, I would tear off about 5 feet or so and have to partially tear down the scaffolding an push it 5 feet over and put it together again.

Even this wouldn't have been so bad except I had to tear a 1 x 4 that was covering the siding that was covering another 1 x 4 nailed to the end rafter. So, it basically came off in layers causing me to move the scaffolding all the way across and then all the way back. The air conditioner wasn't helping me much either.

But, I did get all the wood pulled off. The part around the electrical box was challenging but it's gone.

These don't look like much but they represent a day's work (minus the nail gun fiasco time).





The good news is, for the second time this week, a nasty thunderstorm has somehow moved just around my house.

cliffs

busted my eye
busted my nail gun
busted up the other stuff that needed busting up

I'm not very good at fixing stuff and I just gave up on the nail gun.

So, I bought this bad boy.



This was really tedious. Moving the scaffolding is slow and since that sort of dictates what you can do there's a lot of changing saw blades and nails and, well, it's just slow. But I finished this side.



Got a little more done on the front.



So, I keep thinking I'm messing up stuff, but it turns out the fascia is sort of messed up. There are definitely pieces from different batches. The finish is different and the size is slightly different. Makes things a little more challenging. wft Lowe's.

Had to go get a few more supplies but I really think I'll finish this up tomorrow. Gotta get the drip edge on too.

Home depot/nailgun story with no reference to the Cadillac of nail guns. Blog let down.

You mean Lexus, but you ain't know it.

What be this thing you talk of?

Do they even make Cadillacs anymore?

Finally, a good day.

The shingles got delivered early this morning (pics below).

Wes came by to inspect for my life safety for expired permit permit for the garage. Wes is no longer Weshole. The first thing he noticed was that I used roof trusses instead of framing the roof. He was pretty impressed. I think he sort of realized that I wasn't going to be as much of a pain as he thought. Then, he noticed the bass I have mounted that is hanging on the garage wall. I don't know if this dynamic exists in other parts of the country or with other types of fishermen, but in Texas if two people are bass fishermen they are instant friends. Wes and I talked fishing for a while more and he almost forgot to keep inspecting. He basically said "yeah, looks good" without doing too much more looking. I showed him the pic of the house wrap that zikzak posted and he said that was exactly what he wanted. Thanks zikzak!

Finished framing for the fascia, finished the fascia, and finished the drip edge.

I'll be taking some much needed time off now until the foundation folks finish.

I feel like I won the first playoff game on my way to the super bowl!

Last two sides of fascia.





The shingle guys had to back this truck up with a boom in between 2 trees and a not real wide road to work with.









Singles loaded and ready!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpv...e_gdata_player

I almost wish Snoop would shoot me. I apparently have a pinched nerve in my neck. The pain shoots from my shoulder down to my fingertips. It is not pleasant.

NEW ROOF! No more sweating the rain.

I really liked the guy (Leo) I used to do this. Happy with the job as well. I noticed from the signage on his truck that he does all kinds of remodel work. So, I talked to him about doing the siding. He also hauls off the trash. Based on how much I paid him for the roof ($450) and the fact that my shoulder/arm/hand is completely ****ed up from doing this work, I'm strongly leaning towards having him do the rest. In a way I feel like I've sort of failed, but his prices are pretty much what I'd be paying day labor and I feel confident he'll do a good job.

Foundation guys come Monday.